This Contractor Gives Hilarious Awards To Pets In The Homes He Works On

Brand pages on Facebook are a dime a dozen, and that very ubiquity makes it difficult to cut through the chatter with a message that resonates. All of which begs the question: What is the creative content marketer or community manager to do if they want to elevate their brand's voice on social media?

The answer for Josephsen Hardwood Floors, a third-generation, mom-and-pop contractor, at least, was to recruit some good boys and girls to their team.

With an accidental, outside-the-box strategy that lands somewhere between "adorbs" and "brillz!," Josephsen's patriarch, Fred J., has been awarding Employee Of The Week status to the pets he meets on the job and at his clients' houses.

"Meet Frida. She is this week's Employee of the Week, even though she was constantly biting my shoelaces, and trying to persuade me to let her outside. Sweet, sweet girl."

Just in the last week, the company's follower count on Facebook has mushroomed by a couple orders of magnitude, from around 1,000 people to nearly 27,000. And the vast majority don't live anywhere close to the company's Northfield, New Jersey footprint.

"It looks like we have many brand new Facebook fans today. Welcome! We're glad you're here. We have a repeating Employee of the Week working with us today: Isla ... our own dachshund beagle rescue. Have a great day."

It should also be noted that Josephsen is an equal opportunity employer: The weekly honorees aren't limited strictly to puppers. At least a couple of cats have found themselves in the spotlight — as has, ahem, this donkey!

"Don't you want to kiss my ... Employee of the Week?! This is a first, for us!"

"Meet Bo, a fast contender for this week's Employee of the Week, on the job. Literally. On the job." 😂 😂 😂

"Meet Vito, our current Employee of the Week. I'm going to have to call it a 'long distance' working relationship since he won't get too close to me. He's always sticking his tongue out at me, too. These unions!" 😂 😂 😂

In the wake of this viral buzz, which included profiles at the likes of BuzzFeed, Mashable, and NJ.com, Fred took to Facebook to spread a message of love and gratitude:

"Huh. We went viral. Last night our son told us that his tweet was viewed by more than 15 million people. We are certainly feeling the love! It doesn't matter if you're just following for the dog photos, we're happy to have you on our journey. We're just going to keep doing what we do: making floors beautiful and sharing pics of the new employees we meet along the way."